


Two Days

by OnYourMark



Category: White Collar
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-07
Updated: 2010-09-07
Packaged: 2017-10-11 14:19:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/113299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnYourMark/pseuds/OnYourMark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He'd arrest Neal, but the worst thing Neal can be accused of right now is Flagrant Use of Pasta.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Days

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the White Collar Kinkmeme, polished it up and posted it here. [Prompt](http://community.livejournal.com/collarkink/516.html?thread=268804#t268804) was "Pre-Series: I'd like to see Neal corner Peter in his hotel room one night and seduce him." "Seduce" is rather loosely interpreted in this case.

Peter was pacing in the hotel room, up and down the narrow cheap carpet. He wished it were just a little bigger, so he didn't have to turn so often. If he walked away from the window he lost cell signal and El's voice got crackly, but he couldn't bring himself to sit down. No more coffee after five, he promised himself.

"I know, honey," he said, aware he sounded exhausted. "Yeah, I miss you too. No, tomorrow, I'll be home tomorrow. It's a bust. No, I'll get him. Eventually." He laughed at her question. "Put him away, what do you think I'm gonna do with him?"

There was a knock at his door, and a voice through it. "Room service!"

"Hon, I'm gonna have to call you back," Peter said, glancing at the door. "Yeah. Love you too. Bye."

He tucked the phone in his pocket and walked to the door, opening it with a sigh. "Wrong room," he said to the man standing outside the door with a tray. "I didn't order any room service."

"Are you sure?" the man asked, and looked up from the tray. He had bright blue eyes and a shock of black hair and Peter stared, openmouthed. "Peter Burke, room 301? On Neal Caffrey's credit card?"

Peter reached for his gun. The man smiled.

"Come on, Burke, don't be that way," he said, his tone gentle and cajoling. "Let me in. Your food's getting cold."

Peter hesitated for a second, then stood aside. Neal Caffrey walked in, set the tray down on the little table in the corner, and began opening the styrofoam containers sitting on it.

"Caffrey, what the hell are you doing in my hotel room?" he asked. Caffrey glanced over his shoulder and offered him a plastic fork.

"I thought we should talk," he said. Peter looked down at the fork. "Look, I haven't rigged the cutlery to explode, Agent Burke."

"You and I have very few things to talk about," Peter said, taking it and not moving any closer. "Most of our conversation is going to involve your Miranda rights."

"You can't pin anything on me right now," Caffrey replied, seating himself facing Peter. There was a huge slice of lasagne in one container, what looked like fettucini alfredo in the other. The lasagne was still steaming, and it smelled really, really good. "Sit down. Have a bite. It's not drugged, we can swap if you want."

Peter sat, laying the fork down next to the lasagne.

"You came to my _hotel room_," he said.

"You let me in," Caffrey pointed out, around a mouthful of pasta. He licked alfredo sauce off his lower lip. "I wanted to talk to you. Just once, you know, face to face. Man to man."

"Why here?" Peter asked. "Why now?"

Caffrey leaned forward, eyes alight. "Because I think in two days you're going to be arresting me, and I never feel I can really be honest when everything I say is being recorded in an interrogation room."

Peter picked up the fork and poked at the lasagne, suspiciously, before taking a bite.

"That's some good Italian," he said thoughtfully. "Why am I going to be arresting you?"

"That would give away the game, Peter, come on," Caffrey said.

"You think I'm that close to you?"

"I think you're smarter than anyone else, and way more tenacious," Caffrey said. "If anyone's going to nail me, it'll be you. The cops around here are absurd."

Peter privately held the same opinion, but he wasn't going to tell Neal freaking Caffrey that.

"If I get away," Caffrey said, in a confidential tone of voice, "It'll be my greatest achievement to date. It'll make my name."

"And if I catch you?" Peter asked.

Caffrey shrugged. "_They that with a god have striven_," he quoted whimsically.

"So I'm a god now?" Peter asked, taking another bite of the lasagne. It really was good.

"Or I am. Guess we'll find out."

"_Not hearing much of what we say, take what the god has given,_" Peter finished the line. "Eros Turannos. You don't strike me as a Robinson fan."

"I'm not. But you are," Caffrey said.

"You know I could arrest you right here," Peter remarked.

"For what? Flagrant Use of Pasta?"

"You telling me you paid for this? That hotel uniform, you got a job here?" Peter said, indicating Caffrey's outfit with his fork.

"Impersonating a Wage Slave, right," Caffrey said, and then shook his head when Peter opened his mouth to reply. "Sure, I bet you could slap some cuffs on me and make something stick and I'll do what, thirty days? Sixty? No," he continued. "You want to see what I'm going to do. You want to nail me on something big. In two days, if you believe me. You're not going to put me down for thirty days now when you can put me down for years, if you're patient."

Peter sat back, considering the neat little conundrum Caffrey was presenting. Then he laughed.

"I'd like to play poker with you sometime," he said.

"I'd like to play chess with you," Caffrey replied, smiling.

"I don't play chess."

"I'd settle for Parcheesi," Caffrey said. "Hey, you like Trivial Pursuit?"

"Oh, funny man," Peter told him.

"You would know," Caffrey replied. Peter rested his arms on the table and fixed his prey with a steady look.

"What do you want from me, Neal?" he asked softly. "You know I can't just drop this chase. You know sooner or later I'll get you. Two days, two weeks, two months. Strike a deal now and I can get you leniency, but that's all I can offer you."

"Striking deals is for the desperate," Neal replied. "Give me my pride at least, Peter."

"So why are you here? What do you want?"

Neal stood up and came around the table. He leaned forward, slowly, and rested his hands on the arms of Peter's chair.

"You want to know what I really want, Peter Burke?" he asked softly. "I want a kiss."

Peter laughed. "A kiss."

"Yeah. Call it an obsession, I can't explain it. One kiss, Peter, while I'm still a free man or you're still on the case."

"I have a wife," Peter said. "And unless she dumped you very recently, you have a girlfriend."

"You spend as much time thinking about your wife as you do about me?" Neal asked. "Because I surely don't spend as much time thinking about Kate as I do about you, these days. That's why I'm doing all this. It's a test. I win, trust me, you'll never see me again. You win, I get the lockup and probably never see you again either."

"This is so fucked up," Peter muttered, but he took hold of the cheap uniform waistcoat Neal was wearing and tugged him down.

Neal tasted like garlic and pasta, and he kissed dirty. He made little happy noises in his throat, and one of his hands came up to cup Peter's chin, adjusting the angle slightly.

When he pulled back, those electric blue eyes were closed, and he was smiling.

"See you in two days, Peter," he said softly, and Peter didn't even watch as he walked around the chair and out the door.

He reached for his phone, then reconsidered and checked his wallet, but Neal hadn't lifted either one. He called Elizabeth.

"Hey," he said, when she answered. "Listen, I swear I will make this up to you, but I gotta stay another two days."

Two days later, he had Neal Caffrey bent up against the hood of a car and was reading him his rights. Neal's fingers were flexing, open and closed, open and closed, as he tried to find a comfortable way to keep his cuffed wrists from pulling against the metal.

"Hold your left wrist in your right hand," Peter told him. Neal adjusted his arms and sighed with relief.

"Guess you're the god this time," Neal said.

"I told you I couldn't drop the case," Peter reminded him. "I warned you, Neal."

"You've been warning me for three years," Neal replied. "It's okay. It was worth it. Now I know."

Peter tugged him upright, more gently than perhaps he normally would have, and turned him around. Neal was smiling.

"You're going away for this," Peter said.

"I was always going to go away for something," Neal answered. "At least I got a kiss out of it."

"Get him in the car," Peter told one of the field agents on the scene.

"Be seein' ya, Peter," Neal said, as they led him away.

**Author's Note:**

> [Eros Turannos](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=2042). Peter strikes me as the kind of guy who'd like EA Robinson.


End file.
